TwinOaks

Hi and welcome to the forum, Maria. You are absolutely in the right place to learn about leather. We've go some real experts here on the forum, and just about everyone on here is willing to help you learn. Check out the monthly challenges in the "special events...." forum. That is a voluntary participation online class, with member improvement being the goal. There will usually be a pattern supplied which can be printed and transferred to your leather. Also look for the tutorials that are spread throughout the site. You'll find a wealth of knowlege here. You can also take advantage of the "critique my work" section, where you can post pics of your work and have members offer their suggestions for improvements. On the home page of the site http://leatherworker.net (sans the /forum/) Dale H, and Clay B have given a few step by step tutorials for figure carving, and there's one on how to correctly sharpen and maintain a head knife by Rawhide (Marlon). Glad to have you on board, and we're all looking forward to seeing some of your work. And don't ever be afraid to post questions or pics- sometimes it's the best way to learn. Mike

Hi and welcome to the forum Pat. Nice work on the skull, you did a very nice job using the colors to show shadow. I'm sure it'll draw some more comments from some of the skull afficianados.

I believe that the carnuba creme is basically an emulsified wax compound. I don't know how well any acrylic will penetrate or stay on the leather. I have applied Neat-lac over carnuba and it worked very well.

Awesome, Myriam, just awesome. Thank you.

For the soles, why not go to a tire store and see if they'll give you a used tire? Or a flat? Jig or band saw should cut it nicely, then it's glue time.

I'd like to suggest NOT hitting your fingers with a maul. Fingers are not supposed to get between your pounder and the stamp. And nix the idea of cool wavy patterns by trying to transfer fingerprints to the leather with a mallet....it don't work. Good luck with the doc, I hope you can get straightened out soon. Mike

Zman, I've learned a lot about this subject looking at the different carving styles of many of the artists here. I'm pretty sure it was ClayB that laid it out most clearly for me. Carving a line more or less makes a 'hard' line in the leather. Using a modeling tool, for example, to mold the line without cutting the leather softens it. A good example is muscle tone on animals, and wrinkles in skin. Apply the same philosophy to Sheridan style carvings. It allows the artist to add a detail, without bringing focus to the detail. It's also useful for when you don't want a defined line- just smooth the edges out a bit and it's the same as blurring a pencil line. I recently combined the two in a carving. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?s...20&start=20 I carved the majority of the bird's body, but only modeled (no cuts) the lower half of the wing to indicate the blur normally associated with watching a hummingbird. If you look closely at the whole piece, you'll notice the floral is beveled much more than the bird. That's because it was the March Floral challenge, not the March hummingbird challenge. I wanted the focus on the floral, so I cut and beveled deeper on it.

In that case, Ken, I'd like to order two leather wrapped cartons, please. Tooling optional. Oh, wait...you said for a 25 pack. Nevermind....I'll keep bootlegging them from Mississippi.

Ya know....this whole conversation reminds me of two friends in an art class years ago. One kept buying new fancy gizmo mechanical pencils for his sketch work, the other used a regular old number two wood pencil. Take a wild guess at who the better artist was.

Hmmmm....I seem to be in a mood today.....time to go beat a dead cow.

I'm in a similar situation, Ken. There's a Chevron refinery less than 50 miles from here, and prices are up. Interestingly enough, the demographic of the fuel station really plays a large role in the fuel price. In some of the rural parts of Ms, the fuel prices are consitantly 15-20 cents cheaper than in the urban centers. True in Al, too. So it's not how much it cost to import, refine, and ship.....it's how much you're willing to pay for it. And, I'd be willing to bet good nickels that it a truly viable alternative energy popped up- say tomorrow I found a compound to replace traditional solar cells and could mass produce it for pennies - oil would drop like a rock, BEFORE I could get the product to market. But hey, what are we worried about? Oil prices won't matter once the giganto asteroid smashes the moon and peppers the planet with debris, before impacting the earth.

A good while back (post crash I believe), there was a thread discussing pic posting how-to's. Several programs were mentioned, including one that would convert an image to a line drawing. Does anyone remember the program's name? Or if you remember what thread it was in, I'll be happy to go re-read it. I just can't seem to find the thread... Thanks, Mike

Hi Bruce, Mikeymoto has hit the most important aspect of .PDF files- they are commonly 'read only'. This has a lot of advantages for the business person. Consider if you sent someone a quote on a saddle, via email, and they removed a zero or two from the price. .PDF files prevent a lot of that. Though it is possible to modify a .PDF, you need the full version of Adobe Acrobat (or similar software)to do it, and I think the file would show that it's been modified. And if the persons can afford the full licensed version....they are NOT worried about the price of a saddle. Still, there are some people who can get around it, just like anything else. It's a good tool to have. Mikey gave a link for a .PDF creator, and I'm pretty sure OpenOffice.org is able to save as .PDF.

Talk about bumping on old post..... Well, things sorted themselves out ...kinda... I found a place here in town that offered data recovery for cheap- Geek Squad does full data backup (up to 9 gigs) for $99. If they can't get it 'in store' they offer an off site recovery center starting at about $250. If they can't do it at all, they refund $70 bucks of it. I called Dell, and got a new drive sent, and pulled some hair out, then went to GS. They called me back that night, and via automatic dialer, informed me that my item was ready for pick-up. So, I scurried back to the store. The first work out of the technician's mouth says it all. "Dude...." Apparently the read head took a nose dive into the disk surface, evidenced by "...this horrible screeching noise as soon as they hooked up the power..." Total mechanical failure of the drive. They informed me that anyone trying to recover info from the dumpster wouldn't even try on that HDD. There are services that can get the remaining info, but it involves clean rooms, rebuilding a partial disk surface, special manually operated read heads, and a few thousand dollars. Now, if I was a large corperation with a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of invoices on the drive, then yeah, itd' be worth it. However, my wife and I decided that 200 family pics couldn't justify the money. Now that you're all sad for me, here's the good news: Thanks to my procrastination and general laziness in regards to technical matters that I don't initiate....I've still got most (70+ %) of the photos on the memory chips for the camera. Do you realize how many 3.1 megapixel photos will fit on a 1 gig SD chip?!?!?! And there's room for 700 more! Then there's the 128 chip, and the 1G flash drive.....so I'm really only out a few dozen pics. Mostly happy ending. Since this happened, I've backed up the photos on CD (2 copies) and also on a 160G external HDD I got on sale -$80 for a Seagate. Yes, I was tempted to get the Terabyte....but...well, I needed leather too. More happy endings: Thanks to the crash and my reloading of the software/ OS, I now have a laptop running with two new ram chips, doubling it (upgrade to a gig for $22 ) and I'm running with absolutely NO third party software to slow things down. I only have to reload the GRUB, and re-install my Linux OS (and add the VM) and I'll be just fine. Now, if anyone would like to volunteer to come over and help me re-plumb the water main under the house tommorrow....

First off, Welcome!!! We're glad you joined. Very nice work on those. As you've seen, and had to pay to fix, home machines aren't the best for leather. Check out the 'sewing leather' sub-forum, and I'm sure you'll be able to find advice on which types of machine to invest in. And don't worry about having odd lot coloring- the sales pitch for that is "distinctive".

Oh, those pics!!! Nicely done. I like how you left some space on the piece, instead of cramming it so full of carvings that it distracts from whole.

Nice work. Will you be including a retention strap of any kind?

Rant ON: Yeah, Holly, I have to agree with your last statement. The technologies are already present to virtually eliminate petroleum products as a fuel. BUT, the raw materials always seem to be REALLY expensive, or the science is, or the alternative fuel is, yadda, yadda, yadda. The governments are too tied in with the oil companies, and keep placing restrictions on the development of the new fuels. I saw a program that showcased a car (built in UK) that runs on a soup that's made of basically sea water, with a couple of multivitamins tossed in. It's a chemical conversion process that frees the hydrogen for fuel, and it's by products are something like, pure oxygen, a little fresh water, and a few grams of salt. Where is it now???? Probably confiscated for "review". A bunch of college kids went to Australia with solar powered cars (and they were straight conversion, no capacitance at all IIRC), and proved that technology for cars. FedEx runs it's primary distrubution hub on the west coast via solar. They only buy about 2% of their ANNUAL power usage. Everything else is from the roof mounted solar panels. Heck, one town in Finland/Holland/Norway.... somewhere over near Tom....has gone green. Recycle everything, matter to energy conversion, geothermal, you name it. The calculation for average energy use was only wrong because the think tanks figured 1 computer per house, for only 1 hour...or some nonsense like that. Everyone there has a computer, and they run for more than one hour to be sure- so...gotta go buy some electricity.What a drag, their anual electric bill is somwhere around what it costs to fill up my old truck. And.....the finale! The big hoopla in alternative (combustion) fuel is "Corn based Ethanol" --or-- "grandpa's 'shine recipe". What isn't being publicized is that better fuel can be produced using plant sugars that ARE NOT corn. Native grasses can do just fine, and are a faster, more renewable source that (since it's native) doesn't need a massive effort to transform the countryside to grow it. And then there's sugar cane- the grand poo-pa of the fuel plants. The only problem is that it's difficult to grow it up in the mid west. I've long since decided to convert my home to solar power. It's a great way to go. Install the panels, add the battery, and away you go. Once you're battery is charged, anything you aren't using gets converted to AC and feeds back into the power grid- running the power meter backwards. Wouldn't it be nice to take a month off for vacation and come home to a check from the power company? The only thing stopping me is the nearly $15,000 dollars to get the equipment Well, that's 'cause some oil exec is spending part of that 10 BILLION dollar profit to keep the good senators and congressmen from signing off on any new technologies. Well, thanks for reading.... Rant OFF

Wildrose, I think we're missing out on some seriously good ....stuff, cause I don't see a picture either. Link please?

Yes, papawolf, that's the basic premise. For 'standard' carving: draw a circle (arbitrary object); beveling the outside of the line will have the effect of 'raising' the circle. Alternately, if you carve the inside of the line, it would 'sink'. In inverted carving, the entire circle would 'matted', or compressed. This makes what I can best describe as a negative image. I think you're talking about standard carving. Regis has it right regarding beveling both sides too. If you bevel properly, you won't actually open up the cut, but will lower one side of it.

I'm in.

At the Montgomery, Al, Tandy store yesterday, I ran into a surprise. I'd stopped in for a very expensive lunch break and spoke with a 'loaned' employee. She was from the Atlanta store, and a novice at leather work. After picking up what I wanted, and a brief chat, I had to go. The conversation continued all the way out the door, until I offered to show her some of my work. I happened to have the scrap o' leather I carved for the March figure carving (lioness) in my work truck. I showed her the piece and she raved about the quality of the carving. Personally, I think it's 'good', but then again, I've always been a little too self critical. I astounded her by offering to give her the carving. The parking lot has a new pot hole from the impact of her jaw. She was flabergasted, saying it should be framed or something, and that she couldn't accept it because of it's (perceived) value. So, I didn't push it, even though I knew she liked it. Perhaps she was afraid of being obligated somehow. I don't know. So...to the root of this thread: At what point have you, my fellow members, accepted the quality of your work, and stopped doubting and second guessing yourselves? When did you accept that you created art, not just practice pieces on scraps of leather?

One suggestion for you, Storm. Number them and sign them. That way, when you've built a career from leather, you can go back and sell your first pieces for extra!!! Seriously, keep them around for a while, and look at them often. It's a great way to judge yourself and follow your progress. The artwork is very nice, and I suspect we'll be seeing more from you very soon. Keep up the good work. Mike

..one little, two little, three little MAP torches.... I like the idea, Marlon, and I might just do that. I think I'll pick up a 'spare' from Tandy before I do, though. I wouldn't want to irrevocably damage one of the ones I've inherited from my father.

Obviously I missed the first round, but would like to get in on the second and consecutive rounds. Whenever the list gets regenerated, add me to it. Mike D.